James Foley has been missing since Thanksgiving Day when armed men kidnapped him from the town in Syria where he was stationed covering the conflict there. Foley spent six weeks in captivity last year when he was kidnapped in Libya

It is not unusual for reporters in war zones to face detention or imprisonment multiple times says David Filipov of The Boston Globe.

“What’s unusual here is how long it’s been and that says something also about the kind of reporting he does. He’s on the ground. He’s going to places a lot of people don’t,” Filipov says.

Filipov is a veteran reporter who has covered military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya. He has been detained on multiple occasions, but never for very long.

“It’s part of the deal that everybody knows about,” he said.

Reporters in war zones face inherent risks. They often have to rely on locals for information, transportation and translating. There is little way to know who is trustworthy.

In some regions, bands of kidnappers will capture foreign reporters and sell them to various factions in the conflict.

These are dangers an experienced journalist like Foley would be well aware of. Still, Filipov says, reporters face these risks because they believe in the story.

“People like James Foley are out there because people want to know, people need to know,” says Filipov. “It’s not like he’s taking some crazy risk that we don’t want people to take.”